


In Your Hazel Eyes

by DarthSuki



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Romance, Slow Burn, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-05-25 06:45:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14971346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthSuki/pseuds/DarthSuki
Summary: You are a customer support worker at a company that works for Cyberlife. The schedule is tedious and busy, so its easy for you to get caught up in the cycle of work-sleep-work without so much as finding something to smile about. You decide to take a new walking route one day and come across a garden, and in the garden, a peculiar Android that you grow ever so attached to.This is the story of how you meet Ralph and fall in love, how you both find eachother again after he goes missing, how he learns to heal from his trauma and live like a free man after the revolution.





	1. What's in a Name?

You weren’t sure how you recognized him. Through all the dirt and grime, the stolen clothes and the horrible injury that warped half of his face, you simply did not know how you managed to recognize him.

Through the fear that coursed through your veins and the adrenaline that seemed to stop time, all you could focus on past the knife he held towards you was the fact that this Android, this man--you knew him.

“Ralph?”

_You knew him._

And that’s when his expression changed. From fearful aggression to recognition, and then finally to blubbering joy. The man in front of you dropped the knife to the ground and pulled you into his arms so fast and firmly that you were grateful that he didn’t break or bruise something out of his pure and momentous joy.

“Ralph’s missed you,” is all he can sob in your ear. “He’s missed you so much.”

It freezes you to feel him, to hear him, but most importantly to _see_ him in such a state. He’s covered in the thick blue liquid you knew clearly as his equivalent of blood, wearing tatters for clothes and--god--half his face looks like it was torched and battered in with something heavy. It hurt to see the damage, hurt something deep inside you to see him in such a state.

“Ralph,” the name is forced between gritted teeth, anger already beginning to seeth in your chest as you clutch him as close as you can. There are so many questions you could ask right then, so many things that you held onto for months and thinking they would never be answered.

But one question was prevalent among everything else, suffocating every other idle curiosity with a passionate, loving fire that felt like it was going to scorch him through your fingertips.

_“Who did this to you?”_

**\-- [Several Months Prior] --**

Your life, for the most part, was as disinteresting as it could be. Though you knew there was maybe some bias in that opinion, considering you’d been living your life as long as you had known, it was still a relatively disinteresting life all the same. Your job was stable and your fridge had food in it-- those were already things to be grateful for--a life with too much interest was stressful anyway, and you didn’t want to deal with everything that came with it.

And so you started your day off like any other, readying yourself for another shift of work.

Despite having to shuffle yourself through one of the busiest sections of the city, you always appreciated the sights around you--flashing signs and ads detailing the next innovation of modern technology, the occasional blip of good things on the news (you always focused on the good). It was nice, lively even. It put some sound in your day, something to think about and cling to.

About halfway to work, there was a small garden in one of the larger city centers. It was part of some law or policy to integrate more greenery into the growing metal and gray roads, and you loved seeing the plants every day when you walked to work--they were a wonderful dash of color that always seemed to brighten your day; if those little flowers could grow surrounded by the chaos of the world and Detroit city, then so can you, dammit.

You even stopped to enjoy them on one of those days to work, your eyes boring into the petals and wishing you had that same unrelenting force of will that they did.

_I’m proud of you little flower, you keep showing the world what’s what around here._

It was in the middle of that silent moment between you and the foliage that you were interrupted.

A tap on your shoulder.

“Do you like them?” Came a question, a soft voice barely a foot or so from your ear. It made you jump, having been so deep in your own thoughts you hadn't heard anyone approach you. Your head swirled quickly to the side to catch a glimpse--

It was a man. An Android specifically, but for all intents and purposes for your own spiritual beliefs, a man.

He was tall, body lithe without being stick-thin, hair a gentle blonde and eyes an even softer hazel. For a moment, you were silent, simply taking the sight of him.

“I apologize if I frightened you,” he finally said, tilting his head as the LED by his right temple flashed. “I saw you were enjoying some of the flowers and I am programmed to ask about it.”

You blinked, knocked out of your thoughts and finally sputtered some type of flustered answer of ‘they’rereallyprettythankyou’ before rushing off into the crowd and continuing on your way to work.

You didn’t look back to see if the Android tried to stop you, to see if he did anything other than continue attending to the small garden. Your heart was simply hammering out of both shock and foolish, but understandable social fear.

You ran the rest of the way to work thinking about those pretty hazel eyes.

* * *

Dealing with customers over the phone came with its own unique challenges, but ones that you’d rather deal with than having no job at all.

“Ma’am I’m sorry, but this is not a warehouse, we don’t keep any Androids here, you will have to go directly to the nearest Cyberlife store and--....Ma’am? Hello?”

You clicked the button over your headset with a groan, hoping that it wouldn’t be another needless negative remark on your quarterly report simply because the woman was trying to call the wrong person to begin with. It wouldn’t put you out anywhere, but it did feel stressful enough to deal with in the back of your thoughts, taking other calls and typing through the database to help with people’s orders.

It was numbing at the very least. Hour after hour passed without so much as a hint--you even forgot to eat lunch because you were dealing with a particularly complicated order issue.

“Sir, your Android isn’t even listed in our system--was he registered in the system?....I--er, I mean, I guess it, but I mean he is like a person to be--” You sigh into the phone. “Did you register _it_ into the system of the store you bought _it_ from?”

Work was work as it always was--the same things and the same people working for a company who sold Androids that looked, sounded and felt too human for you to be talking about them like a computer.

At least you had a job.

* * *

Other calls, other issues, all of them began to blur together until you were packing up to leave for the day.

The sun was already dipping beneath the horizon as you walked out the front door to the nondescript building, personal bag slung over your shoulder. The streets were still populated, but far less so than what there had been earlier that day--more peaceful, at least. One of the few benefits of working so late sometimes.

You let yourself get lost with nonconsequential thoughts for a while, eyes flicking between the sidewalk in front of you and down to your feet. Lights were starting to turn on around you in the street, flickering to life autonomously just as a police drone hovered overhead and turned a corner just up ahead--a relatively normal walk home.

Except you came upon the garden again that you noticed earlier that morning. The same garden you ran from--you never did get to enjoy the flowers before you acted like an unsocial idiot.

The overall landscape was easier to decipher with fewer people--it was a small park, honestly, perhaps no more than the size of a block of its own right, with one long sidewalk pathway that went down the center to make it easier to get to the stores on the other side.

The two major sections was comprised of large trees and a couple saplings that looked to be recently planted, but the outer area was lined with flowers. The colors carefully sectioned off in a manner that looked deliberate and, honestly, complicated.

There had been so much care taken to the garden that you couldn’t help but stop once more from your walk.

This time you took the time to sit at one of the benches on the center pathway, right beside some beautifully bright orange flowers that you honestly couldn’t name. Regardless of your own lacking knowledge, a lot of work had been put in to make them grow so well, that much you knew. They must had been cultivated with a gentle hand, since you don't believe the city contracted any massive landscaping company to do the work.

It was genuinely nice to take a few seconds off your feet--the constant sitting in your office cubicle had left you a bit out of shape to walk the full way to work and home without feeling sore and at least mildly tired. Perhaps it was worth it to take a break at the garden anyway--it was halfway between the two points.

You hummed and turned your head to the side when you heard a noise of someone nearby. With a blink, you realized that the slim, blond-haired figure who was kneeling in the dirt of the garden edge just a few meters away was the very same man you had abruptly run away from earlier.

Well, the same model at least. It was odd to think about Androids sharing the same face with so many others--like having a thousand twins. God. 

He knelt there, simply tending to a patch of flowers without an ounce of focus on anything else. He reminded you of coworkers, when they were just too drawn into their work. He looked peaceful, like he genuinely loved what he was preoccupied with.

He looked completely human.

You weren’t sure what feeling pressured you the most to step closer to him; was it curiosity, gratefulness or, perhaps even guilt for what happened before?

Regardless your legs lifted you, walked you over to him.

“I uh--” you weren’t sure what to say at first. “Hello again.”

The man stilled, but finally turned to look at you, those same hazel eyes meeting yours for a moment before a smile pulled on his lips.

“Hello!” His tone was far too bright for it being so late in the evening, when most people were eager to simply go home after work. "You were here earlier today and didn't answer my question--was it out of line? I can take a report if you felt it was too invasive."

But he didn’t get to go home. He didn’t probably have a home. After a moment, you shoved that line of thought from your head and instead tried not to sound like a fool again.

“I uh--I’m sorry for hurrying off earlier. I like the flowers a lot--did you grow them?”

Your eyes drifted down to his chest, hoping to get a name or something so you didn’t have to try and bumble through the question yourself--Androids had names right? Something individual to them? It was always hard to tell when you only dealt with the customer service side of things for Cyberlife, and not even through the company itself, but a third party entirely that took on some of the jobs the company couldn’t otherwise outsource to Androids themselves and--

“I did grow them!” The man’s voice shoves you out of your own head. “I am assigned to this garden specifically and have been taking care of it for the last three years. The city has strict rules about the flowers and trees to be grown here and I am to ensure that they stay maintained.”

WR600. That’s the only thing you have to work with.

“They’re beautiful!” The compliment pops out of your mouth before you have a chance to stop it. It seems to make him happier, smiling almost like as sweet as a kid who is proud of his own creation. “I--er. Do you have a name?”

The Android blinked at you.

“A...name?”

There was a little creak in your heart that you chose to ignore, instead forcing a bit too much enthusiasm into your voice as you spoke; how could you expect him to have one? To a lot of people he was just a machine.

Just a machine to them.

“I mean, something you’re called, like...like a more specific number than...that--” You pointed to what must have been his serial code just below his model number on the chest of his green gardener’s uniform. “Except instead of numbers, its in letters.”

He blinked again, LED flashing yellow as he took in the information, but wasn’t seeming to understand.

“Okay, let’s try it like this,” You say with a raised brow. “Hello, my name is…” Just for an example, you repeat the phrase with your own name before gesturing for him to end the sentence himself.

“I don’t have a name,” The Android finishes slowly, pursing his lips together after a moment. There’s a beat of silence before he speaks again. “I was not needed to have a name, so therefore I don’t have one. “

That seemed unfair. That seemed very, _very_ unfair in a long lines of unfair things you chose to ignore or downplay. Frustration filled your chest and you, quite suddenly, speak the first response that comes to mind.

“How about I give you a name?”

It wasn't obvious if there had been an overstep at first. Your words sounded half-annoyed, moreso at the fact that he could walk around and smile and talk and look at you like that with his pretty hazel eyes and just...not have a name? At all?

It seemed to be such a simple concept for things to have at the very least a name to their ownership--something that embodied who they were to others.

The Android tilted his head to the side, curiosity seeming to fill his otherwise confused gaze.

“....Am I supposed to answer that?” He asked. “I...haven’t thought about a name.” He thought some more, conflict making the LED on his temple flash between blue and yellow at a rapid pace. “I….would like it.” Another beat of silence, another flash of thought. “What would your name be for me?”

Oh damn. You were on the spot. You did this to yourself, after all, bumbling into the moment without considering why you had wanted to talk to this Android in the first place.

“Uh,” is all you can muster after a moment of non-thought. “Give me a moment--I need to think of a good one.”

In all honesty, that sounded a lot more sure than you felt. Names, what are good names?

Jeffery? No, that just didn’t sound right for him. Dennis? Still not right, too...wrong?

“Oh!” His body echoes yours as you brighten, a finger pointing at him in a eureka moment. “What about Ryan?”

The Android looks blankly at you for a moment before furrowing his brows and shaking his head. You huff and go back to fervent thought, recalling ever a situation when you had to focus this hard about someone’s name.

Robert, Daniel, Jack, Jacob….

“Ricky….R…..” The sound sticks to your tongue for a few seconds. It makes you sound more like a small dog than anything else, but you finally flick your eyes back to look at the man in front of you who looks so gentle, so sweet, so confused and curious all at the same time.

And then it hits you.

“Ralph!”

It sounded _perfect._  It sounded exactly like he looked, like what you saw in those lovely hazel eyes.

“How about the name ‘Ralph’?” You’re smiling like an idiot by that point, a silly little fool who is standing there giving a random Android a name and talking to him like he’s a friend--a person.

 _But it’s not that silly to treat someone like a human being,_ your thoughts echo from your inner conscious. _He deserves to have a name._

Slowly, his--Ralph’s--expression blossomed into a smile.

“I like that name,” he said with a little laugh. “Ralph. Thank you. I….have never been given anything before.”

He looked gentle like that, gentle and happy and so oddly sweet--the fact that he was an Android was lost to you if only for the fact that you were giving this man a name, a literal name, and that simply didn’t register as right in your head at all.

You could see life and meaning in his eyes, enraptured as you were momentarily, life and meaning you wanted to know a little more about.

But it was late, and you needed to be home, start dinner and settle down to bed to redo the cycle all over again.

You hurried home with only a short couple pleasantries to the gardener, taking the time to shake his hand (to which he was really confused) and promise to see him again tomorrow morning (which must not have happened all that often). You weren’t sure if his soft wave goodbye or cheerful expression was something programmed into him or not, but it warmed your heart regardless, only emboldening a desire in your heart to see Ralph the next morning.

Life felt just a little bit more interesting now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this chapter took so long to get out! I had to work on several commissions and my depression was kicking my butt for a fair while, but behold, a new chapter that's almost twice as long as the previous one!

The following morning came too quickly. Like a banshee, the alarm beside your bed shrieked into the air of your apartment, abruptly yanking you out from whatever dream you were having. You managed to turn the damn thing off, but only just as the last flittful moments of the night time visions faded away from memory. For a cold moment you were left to the hard reality of life again--like every morning, it took a breath to absorb it all once more, as if you're entire life had happened all in the expanse of a night and it was up to you to take it and go.

Bare feet against the wooden floor, you padded through your tiny, one-bedroom apartment to get ready for work. It was a cycle you had moved through so many times that your body was on autopilot, leaving your mind to wander from thing to another now that you were, for the most part, conscious. Thoughts about life, about work--those were all simple and tedious things you already had to think about on an occupied mind. No, you let yourself think, to wander about your curiosities and entertain what came forth.

By the time you were in the shower, the reminder of something popped into your head. A face, a smile and a pair of pretty hazel eyes.

Ralph.

And just like that, a flood of memories from the day before returned to the forefront of your mind, acutely reminding you of all that had happened when you decided to stop at that little garden area on the way to work. You remembered talking to him, remembered the way he looked so confused when you asked for his name originally. 

You remember feeling so weird that he didn't have a name.

Sentience was something powerful. The ability to distinguish the self was a defining factor for why humans were able to achieve so much in the first place, or at least plenty of people argue as much. Personhood, the right to be, well, alive, came with that notion.

Were androids sentient?

It was a question that came with a lot of weight. Despite living dead-center in the bloom of technology in both time and geographical area, you had a surprisingly low number of encounters with androids as a whole. Hell, even though you worked in a call center for Cyberlife, you had yet to step into a store itself. You were in a position where you could simply sidestep the worrying thought, simply pretend that your life could be its own boring, self-contained sphere.

But you remembered Ralph and his deep, soulful-looking eyes. You remembered the way they watched you, the way they danced with emotions so well--it was nothing like talking to a machine.

A machine.

The term hung on your mind like a coat on a rack, soaking-wet and heavy with doubt. You wondered if anyone had thought about the topic so deeply before, if anyone had been so awestruck by an android’s level of humanity that they too had to question what might have been inevitable of a fact--were they truly alive?

There was such a genuine conflict in your head that you stopped the train of thought--it wasn’t hard to see why some people may have never given it any thought. Would your mind change if you had been around other androids? Was it simply how human Ralph looked that made you wonder?

The entire process of getting ready for work takes no more than a bit over a half hour, on a good day at least. By the time you’re done, the sun is hovering over the horizon of the morning sky, shining down rays of warming sunlight over everything it can touch. 

Most days it serves as a reminder for how early it was, and just how much you hated waking up at that time of the morning. It couldn’t have been much different than most workers though--a simple fact of life that everyone had to grumble through in their own way.

Fall was starting to creep into the air. Summer was on its last legs, consistent warm days turning into a coin toss mixed in with cold nights and breezy, cool afternoons that started people to require a jacket or so. The trees had begun to change color along parts of your walk to work--every day they looked a little more red, gold or orange, and every day more of them fell like a shower around you when you walked beneath their shady canopy.

Peaceful. It was the only moments of peace you really had when you counted the stress of both work and home. Adulthood was just like that, you guessed--moments of peace in a sea of problems and issues.

About ten minutes in to your walk had you stepping into the more bustling parts of the outer city, with roads further converging and crowds a common sight along the sidewalks. It was by about then that you started passing through the major square, the one filled with TVs and blaring with sound that, luckily, didn’t seem to come with any anxiety-inducing news. 

You heard the distant weather forecast (getting colder, put on a jacket!) and the winner to last night’s sports game (home team won, what a game!) but your eyes wandered instead to the small park that filled the center of the square.

The one from yesterday.

You stood still for a moment, taking in the sights that you hadn’t quite taken in before, when the sun was glittering down over the trees. They too were changing colors, though they seemed yet to lose any of their leaves. There were families walking through the center pathway, a pair of children playing hide-and-seek around one of the benches--the flowers seemed to be just a touch more colorful in the morning light. It was, honestly, quite beautiful to see.

You glanced about the park from where you stood, hoping to see a familiar shape walking about. When you couldn’t find him, you started walking around, circling one side of the park, and then the other. Still no sign of Ralph. The absence of the gardener disappointed you more than you thought you’d feel--an odd feeling for someone you had only just met the other day. 

It struck you after a moment that it must have looked odd, sounded odd if someone would have stepped up to ask why you were looking hopelessly around for someone, only to answer ‘I’m looking for an android I met yesterday because it feels like I made a friend’. 

The only thing you’d get in return would have been a weird look, assuming the person didn’t feel particularly angry or annoyed with androids that day; unemployment was almost at 40%.

You tried to cover up your searching by sitting at one of the empty benches, hoping that Ralph had stepped away for a few minutes. Perhaps he was gathering the supplies he needed for the flowers, perhaps he was assisting someone who put in a complaint or comment about the park. Perhaps he was just….running late? Did androids even run late to work? That was under the assumption that their work was a job, and they had free time after the job and…

Too complicated, too many rabbit holes that your mind wanted to scurry down and follow to the end. 

You stood up slowly from the bench and, with one final glance around, you started the second half of your walk to work.

* * *

The office felt busier than ever when you got in.

On any given day, it wasn’t uncommon to take a few calls in a half hour, with most of them being resolved with some simple answer a customer could have figured out themselves with a proper internet search. 

It wasn’t unusual to be a bit busy, but it was absolute chaos when you stepped into the building. The air was filled with ringing phones and conversation, most of which you couldn’t do much to pick out from one another; they all blurred together in a constant, buzzing noise that followed you all the way to your desk. 

You had a few minutes before you had to sit down and start taking calls, so you used the free moments as an excuse to lean over one of the dividers to the desk beside you. The young woman who sat there, Renee, was a short, unassuming young woman in her early 20’s. She was one of the best callers despite her young age, taking one after another without so much as a hint of fatigue--you often handed her the most capricious of customers since she could handle them so well.

Luckily enough, you found her just as she was setting the phone down. You seized the moment to speak before she would instinctively reach to pick it up when the inevitable ring came.

“Hey,” You said, waving your hand over the divider to catch her eyes. She turned them over to you, glittering green and curious. “So uh, what’s going on today? It’s uh, busier than usual?”

Though you were damn sure of it, there was still a moment of awkward fear that maybe it seemed that way simply because you were bad at your job, hadn’t noticed something on your walk, or a bit of information from last week’s meeting. Maybe even--

“--a new model.”

You blinked, not realizing you had been so deep in your thoughts that you missed nearly all of what Renee had answered with.

“S-sorry,” you offered an awkward grin. “Could you repeat that?”

The young woman smiled and pointed to a screen towards the end of the room. It was flashing over a news story that answered your question as much as she herself did.

“Cyberlife announced a couple new models today,” Renee said, looking back to meet your eyes. “The calls are all from local warehouses and private business trying to secure pre-orders, at least that’s been most of my calls since I got in earlier this morning.”

Thank god for Renee and her wide, exuberant grin. That alone was plenty to calm your nerves, help you realize your feverish worry was nothing more than paranoia-fueled fear. At least it explained things; you hadn’t a lot of experience with pre-orders, but there seemed to be plenty of more experienced employees around you to help if it was needed.

Alright then, it was time to get with the grind. After clocking yourself into the system with the computer on your desk, you saw the red light flicker to life on the phone beside you. After a breath, it began to ring. Instinct had you reach out, pluck it from the receiver and hold it to your ear as your mind started to numb itself into the workday’s beginning.

“Hello, Androtech Suppliers, proud partner of Cyberlife technologies!” Your voice sounded chipper, bright and automated. “How can I help you today?”

* * *

By the time that the work day is done, you’re exhausted. Despite having been at a desk for the last eight hours of your life, you feel drained, life sucked right out of you. The sound of ringing phones has been grating against your ears for the last hour because, by god, there is no way to make a tone that doesn’t eventually rub your mind raw and numb when it means that you have yet  _ another _ customer to work with.

Clocking out of the system is a victory, albeit small in the grand scheme of your sanity, but it’s satisfying to gather up your things and make your way out of the office, the building, and finally onto the sidewalk just as the sun seemed to be dipping out of the sky.

Exhaustion is heavy in your limbs, your thoughts, tugging you down with every step forward. Though there’s certainly nothing physical with your job, the drain is still intense, leaving you feeling so empty by the end of every shift.

You made your way towards home in silence, thoughts gently rolling over the events of the day. Phone calls left and right, one after another that you nearly didn’t have a chance to step away from your desk to each lunch. Renee said that’s how new models usually went down, at least in terms of preorders--it was going to be a busy couple more days until the initial hype dropped and things evened out again.

Working hard for the paycheck, you supposed, though it would be nice to have enough energy to actually do something worthwhile after work every night--Friday seemed too far off to think about, a mere mirage over the horizon that you’d never get to.

By the time you arrived at the halfway point of your walk home, darkness had already crept over the skyline. The sun was gone, hidden away behind the tall buildings and horizon, and the streetlights had started to flicker to life.

You stood under the soft glow of one, looking out towards the garden that filled the area of the market square. At first, there doesn’t seem to be anyone there; the garden itself looks silent and empty. 

It’s not quite clear why sadness seems to fill your heart at the sight, or lack thereof, but you’re more than aware that you had been hoping to see a particular face. 

Something compels you to stay. It’s no more than a tiny whisper in your thoughts, but it’s enough to give you reason to take a seat at one of the nearby benches. Your feet hurt after all, the consistent walking has not done well for your old pair of sneakers--you really need to buy some new ones, maybe with some extra padding.

When you let yourself drop onto the bench, a soft and familiar voice rings out nearby.

The sound of your name catches your attention, startling you enough to quickly move you back onto your feet, one hand clutching the strap of your bag.

“I--Yes?” you turn your head down the center path of the garden, towards the shopping center, just in time to see those soft hazel eyes gazing back. Ralph approached you quickly, a smile on his face and a gentle flicker to his LED. “Oh, Ralph!”

The recognition poured into your expression and you laughed, falling once more unto the bench when you realized how silly you must have looked at being so surprised at his entrance into your attention.

“Goodness, and here I thought I wasn’t going to see you again,” You said with a laugh gently hanging on your words. “I didn’t see you this morning on my way to work.”

Ralph stood awkwardly beside the bench for a few moments before finally deciding to sit beside you, though he kept very much to his own bubble, pressed to the other side of the sitting area as if unsure how to hold himself.

“I...was required by my programming to get maintenance done.”

You glanced towards him, taking in his gentle features and neatly-kept hair. 

“Maintenance?” You asked curiously, if only because you knew so very little about the logistics behind city-serving androids. “Is that something you have to get often?”

Ralph didn’t answer at first. Instead, he merely looked down at his clasped hands. He...looked nervous, for some reason, though you didn’t feel like it was appropriate to prod--it left you concerned, regardless, and you reached out a hand unthinkingly to lay over one of his own.

“Is...everything alright?” You whispered gently.

It was a gesture of comfort, you didn’t really give much thought into the reason behind it, nor to the fact that the being sitting beside you didn’t inherently need for the same comforts as a human--or did it?

Regardless, Ralph shook at the touch, looking surprised at it, and you quickly drew your hand back in the realization of what you had done.

The two of you sat in silence for a few moments, both with your eyes on your hands and your thoughts to yourselves. It...wasn’t a very good feeling, awkwardness bubbling in your stomach, unsure if you had said or done something wrong. Maybe you had--maybe you were trying to make a friendship from nothing. Maybe all you were doing was hindering this android from his job, forcing him into social niceties--could that be part of his programming? To humor humans around him who wanted to talk? 

You weren’t sure. You didn’t like not being sure.

Abruptly, you pushed yourself onto your feet, ready to walk off and forget everything and go back to your normal, boring life. You were ready just to toss all your curiosities and worries aside about the gardening android you’d named ‘Ralph’ and pretend that it was all a silly little fantasy.

A hand on your wrist stopped you, fingers gentle but firm as they wrapped around your limb, holding you still when you were about to walk away.

You stilled, felt his grip linger, and then slowly moved to sit back down on the bench, a little closer this time to Ralph.

The silence didn’t last for much longer than a breath or two.

“...Most humans don’t pay me any mind,” Ralph began to say. “We--I--was created to tend this garden, which includes the programming to interact with guests and find out what they like, how I can continue to improve this garden. But….I have never spoken to a human before. Not...like you.”

“Me?” You asked softly, unsure of what he meant. 

Ralph nodded. “You talk to me as if I’m….” He paused, trying to find the words. “As if I’m another human.”

His LED was flashing at that point, back and forth: blue, yellow, blue, yellow,  _ red _ , yellow--

“H-Hold on now,” You forced words from your mouth even when you didn’t entirely have them nailed down yourself. “Hey, it’s alright, just….it’s okay, I promise.”

You didn’t know exactly what you were promising, but it did seem enough at least to calm the android down a bit. He pursed his lips and finally looked in your direction. Did he look….confused? Hurt? The expressions were very hard to decipher when they were all muddled together on his face at the same time.

Ralph’s eyes looked...surreal. Vulnerable. Curious. They looked almost human, if only for a moment, neglecting the still-flashing LED on his temple.

“Does...nobody else talk to you?” You feel confident enough to ask the question, gently, one hand reaching out to him again and falling on his shoulder.

Ralph stared at you for a moment, then spoke.

“Most humans prefer to….hit me. Young humans. Teenagers.” His gaze fell, though it was only for a second. “I have had to undergo multiple repairs due to the actions of several teenagers that live in the neighborhood nearby.”

Realization slowly dawned over you at his explanation, the reason why he was so taken back by an extremely simple act of kindness.

Your hand gripped his shoulder a little tighter.

“Is that why you weren’t here this morning?” 

Ralph nodded after a moment. 

“I am programmed to tend to this garden,” he said simply. “And gather the opinions of Detroit residents about my work, the choice of flora and any relevant health hazards during pollen season.”

He paused for only a beat.

“...however, the only feedback that has been given to me until you has been in the form of physical abuse by a group of teenagers who, given recent events, find amusement in hurting androids.”

You weren’t sure how to feel or react to the words. Though they were deeply troubling, Ralph spoke them with such a level of distant coolness that you...weren’t quite sure what to say in response?

“I’m sorry,” came out first, seeming the most appropriate. “You can’t….report them? Or anything?”

The answer was heavy at the bottom of your belly; you knew that he couldn’t just do that--he wasn’t a human, so it wasn’t harassment or abuse, legally speaking at least. The offender could be tried for the damage to property, especially if it was against the city, but you doubted the police force would put that much effort into a single civil-service unit when he could just be...replaced.

The information didn’t sit well with you.

It challenged a lot of what you knew and accepted as true, forced contrasting ideals and opinions to play together in your head. It didn’t feel fair that Ralph could be hurt without consequence, it didn’t feel right that he could be looked at with such little worth and, yet--

It started to make your head hurt. It was so easy to be distant, considering you had no funds to have a house android and you never worked with them directly. It was easy to not care or think about them as people when all they were marketed as hyper-realistic machines.

Machines.

_ Machines? _

But when you had one sitting next to you, staring into your eyes as he talked about being hit and broken, it made something hurt in your heart. It was something  _ genuine _ in his expression, enough that you were forced to confront the blissful ignorance you’d lived with for the past few years.

In that moment, you couldn’t call him a machine. He wasn’t human, wasn’t flesh and blood in the same way that you were, but he….he was still had the same worth, the same right to happiness that you did.

You felt your hand move, shifting from Ralph’s shoulder to lay over one of his hands.

“I’ll visit you every day,” you promised softly, hoping that it would mean something to him. “And if those teenagers bother you again, I…”

The sentence trailed off. You weren’t sure what you could do, if it meant anything to know when people were harassing him. Nevertheless, firm warmth bubbled into your words as you spoke again.

“If they hurt you again, tell me--okay?”

Ralph blinked and looked at you for a long while. You couldn’t make out any particular expression that moved across his face, any sense of emotion that filled those hazel eyes of his. He finally settled on something akin to happiness--his lips pulled into a soft smile and his LED finally settled onto a soft, comforting blue twinkle of light against his temple.

“Does that mean that we are friends?” he asked after a moment. “I think that the interactions we’ve held so far contribute to friendship, though I do not want to misinterpret your intentions.”

For some reason, his curiosity made you smile all the same.

“Yes,” The word sounded very matter-of-factly. “I think that does mean that we are friends, Ralph.”

The evening lingered pleasantly between the two of you from there, shifting into a gentle conversation that moved from topic to topic, though it largely lingered on the garden itself and Ralph’s work in caring for it. It was obvious how much he loved the plants, loved tending to them and watching them grow, especially since it became apparent that each WR600 model was assigned to a specific district and expected to remain there.

Then the topic moved to you and your job, though you felt intensely odd and awkward to talk about how your occupation was essentially selling androids. There was an intense internal fire going on in your thoughts, and talking about your job didn’t help very much at all, making you feel more awkward and unsure than anything else. Ralph seemed aware of the fact and, thankfully, continued to other topics as the two of you enjoyed one another’s simple company.

By the time you thought to glance at your phone for the time, it had grown late--late enough that you needed to hurry home to prepare for yet another long, exhausting day at the office. 

You bid Ralph a goodnight and took joy in the smile from him that followed you out of the garden, the sound of his sweet voice still hanging in your ears even as you readied yourself for bed later that night.

“Goodnight!” He had said, so bright and happy. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning!”

* * *

_You didn’t know what deviancy was back then. You didn’t understand it, the idea that androids were labeled deviants when they finally had control and free-will over their own happiness and desires._

_No, back then it was simpler, easier, and all that mattered was the fact that Ralph seemed happy to have you as a friend._

_ Looking back, it’s clear that night was when Ralph started becoming a deviant, though you wouldn’t realize it for months--not until your friendship had started to blossom into something more. _

 


End file.
